Doctor Stranger (2014) [Dakteo Yibangin] is a South Korean television series starring Lee Jong-suk, Jin Se-yeon, Park Hae-jin and Kang So-ra. It aired on SBS from May 5, 2014 through July 8, 2014.
Doctor Stranger is about a child, Park Hoon (Lee Jong-suk), whose father, Park Cheol (Kim Sang-joong) is a famous thoracic surgeon in South Korea. The father is forced by Jang Seok-joo (Chun Ho-jin), a South Korean politician, to go to North Korea to operate on the North Korean leader, Kim Il-sung, so the leader’s death will not lead to war with the United States over nuclear weapons. The child is also taken to use as leverage against the father. Jang Seok-joo who sent them to North Korea wants to eliminate both father and son while they are still in North Korea so South Koreans won’t realize that it was the surgeon that save the day. Jang Seok-joo wants to use his hero status to become the South Korea president. Father and son live but they are forced to remain in North Korea.
After his father saves the North Korean leader, the child Park Hoon meets Song Jae Hee, a young girl (Seo Ji-hee), at a north Korean event and later they become friends. Park Hoon grows up in North Korea and is trained as a thoracic surgeon by his father and igraduates from medical school in North Korea.
While in medical school Park Hoon and Jae Hee (Jin Se-yeon) fall in love and become engaged. When she and her family are taken away to a North Korean concentration camp, Park Hoon searches for them but is unable to find them. Years later he is forced to work at a hospital run by the government and the military. It is a horrible place that does experimental surgeries on live, healthy people. When two very sick people, Jae Hee and her father, are brought together to that hospital, Park Hoon must go against what he’s been told to do and make horrible decisions to save her life.
After Jae Hee’s surgery, Park Hoon’s father visits him in his quarters which he is not allowed to do. He tries to talk Park Hoon into escaping with Jae Hee, but Park Hoon won’t leave his father behind. When his father is caught and killed by the North Korean military, Park Hoon is forced to take Jae Hee and go to Budabest to show off the surgery he did that saved her. While there he tries to flee to South Korea with Jae Hee, but they are both shot and she falls a great distance from a bridge into a large river. Thinking she is probably dead, the heartbroken Park Hoon is forced to continue his flight to South Korea alone or die.
Once in South Korea, Park Hoon is crazed and unruly because of all he has been forced to do by the North Korean government and because of what happened to his father and Hae Hee. He ends up getting thrown in prison numerous times as he continues trying to find himself and about Jae Hee. He tries to run a small medical clinic in a very poor area of Seoul but is told that Jae Hee is alive and now he needs a large sum of money to get her out of North Korea. He helps a friend deliver water for extra cash and is delivering water to the South Korean Myungwoo University Hospital when he chooses to operate without permission, to save a child’s father. His incredible surgery skills are recognized and he is given a job working as doctor at Myungwoo Hospital. He becomes the rival of Harvard educated genius Doctor Han Jae-joon / Lee Sung-hoon (Park Hae-jin) who is at Myungwoo to take revenge on the hospital. At the hospital Park Hoon meets Doctor Han Seung Hee (Jin Se-yeon), an expert in oriental medicine anesthesia, who looks exactly like Jae Hee, but she claims she does not know Park Hoon.
It soon becomes apparent that Doctor Han is involved in a secret mission being directed by someone from North Korea. It also appears that this person is an enemy of Dr. Park Hoon.
A friend said this, “A policeman just has to be good at catching criminals. A doctor just has to be good a fixing people.” Listening to that, “a politician just has to practice clean politics”.
Episodes: 20
